The inability to get my hands up past my shoulders is creating some new and challenging problems for me. Of course there is the whole inability to feed myself without two hands, a problem partly solved by leaning my chair back to where my hands become more level in their travel rather than up and down. There is also the drinking issue; again, positionng of my chair helps.
Then there are a whole host of smaller things that can only be discovered once you get there. For example, yesterday I found that I cannot put my earbuds into my ears. Once again, laying flat in my wheelchair helps with this, as my hands don't have to go up so much. Also, however, I am also finding it impossible to hold my phone up to my ear, giving me the double whammy of no earbuds and not being able to hold the phone. I'm using the speaker a lot now. It is another solution, but not one I can use while out and about in my chair, or in the van for that matter.
It's also making it extremely difficult to get things out of my cupboards, even out of the first shelf. The lift on the wheelchair helps tremendously for this, yet there are still near impossibilities. For example, I use a grabby stick to get a wine glass out of the cupboard. I grab the stem of the wineglass whereupon the body of the glass comes to rest on the grabber, making it possible for me to lift the whole this down from the cupboard. Except it has become not so much a graceful lift downwards. It's now a controlled crash, hopefully without actually crashing the glass. I'm going to need acrylic wine glasses soon.
Then there are my pills. Getting them collectively into my mouth has been an issue for some time now. I've been using one hand to propel the other upwards, making the pill toss into my mouth a reasonably successful event. These days, though, that toss is getting more problematic. I will soon need help in a thing so simple as taking my pills.
I can keep going; I won't. Here is what I ask of you for today. Every time you lift your hands to do something, stop at chest height. See if you can accomplish what you are trying to do without lifting your arms past your shoulders. See if you can accomplish what you are trying to do if there is any weight at all to what you are trying to lift. It will be an enlightening experiment. Ask me how I know.
Two years ago, I had a pinched nerve of some sort and one arm I definitely could not lift beyond shoulderlength .. so friggin hard. The difference is, mine mended... you don't realize how much they do until you can't ... sorry...
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